Refrigerators are electrical appliances capable of maintaining a storage chamber below room temperature. Food or other objects can be stored in a refrigerator in a cold or frozen state. The space inside the refrigerator is maintained at a low temperature by cool air circulation. Cool air is continuously generated through refrigeration cycles, each cycle including compression, condensation, expansion and evaporation. Cool air is distributed to the inner space of the refrigerator by convection.
A top-mount type refrigerator has a freezer disposed above a refrigeration chamber. A bottom-freezer type refrigerator has a freezer disposed below a refrigeration chamber. A side-by-side type refrigerator has a freezer and a refrigeration chamber disposed side by side.
Some refrigerators are equipped with a door opening device coupled to a rotatable or pivotable door handle which allows a user to open the refrigerator door easily by turning the handle and without manually pulling the door open.
However, a conventional rotatable door opening device only allows the door handle to pivot in a specific direction to open the door. For instance, if a horizontal door handle is designed to pivot downward, a user would not be able to trigger the door opening mechanism by pushing it upward.